SIX STEPS TO BETTER B2C MARKETING

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Lesley Hensley
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2 2 SIX STEPS TO BETTER B2C MARKETING marketing is highly personalized, highly measurable and an incredibly cost effective marketing capability B2C Marketing is a time tested, proven tool for getting promotions and new product information to current and new customers in the most effective means possible. marketing is highly personalized, highly measurable and an incredibly cost effective marketing capability. Businesses of all sizes can improve their B2C marketing program with this list of high impact tips. 60% of marketers believe marketing produces positive ROI and called marketing the most powerful advertising channel. MarketingSherpa 2013 Annual Marketing and Media Survey. We want to help you accelerate every part of your B2C marketing effort by providing an outline toward optimizing your efforts. We ve created a practical approach to B2C marketing strategy with this framework to plan marketing development and prioritize your objectives and audiences. 1. Define and prioritize objectives 2. Define the audience and craft personas 3. Identify customer needs and pain points 4. Design engaging content 5. Deliverability 6. Measure and improve B2C marketing programs can fail if you don t put in the up front work to properly plan. Mailigen has the easy to use tools and resources you need to drive conversions with powerful messages, newsletters, surveys and mobile messaging. If you want to learn more about Mailigen, take it for a test drive before choosing your marketing solution. 60% of marketers believe marketing produces positive ROI and called marketing the most powerful advertising channel. MarketingSherpa 2013 Annual Marketing and Media Survey. Visit for a 30 day free trial, our Customer Success Managers are always ready to answer your questions.

3 3 90% 119 % 90% of B2C marketers are using content marketing, compared with 86% last year. cmo.com Triggered messages get 119% higher click-through rates than business as usual messages. Epsilon 2014 In 2014, marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the US. emarketer MARKETING 34% 34% of B2C marketers consider themselves effective at content marketing up from 32 % last year. cmo.com

4 1. DEFINE AND PRIORITIZE YOUR OBJECTIVES Building a clear vision of what you want to accomplish will get you off to the right start Tight planning will create the results you want from your B2C

4 4 1. DEFINE AND PRIORITIZE YOUR OBJECTIVES Building a clear vision of what you want to accomplish will get you off to the right start Tight planning will create the results you want from your B2C marketing campaigns. The first step in building a B2C marketing plan is to commit to measurable and well defined and prioritized objectives. Building a clear vision of what you want to accomplish will get you off to the right start. First, determine what the business objective is or problem you are trying to solve for the customer. While B2B marketing has longer purchasing cycles, B2C marketers need to plan for greater agility and spontaneity in their planning cycles. Plan in 30 day increments to offer products and services for your target audiences. Some examples include: 1. Building awareness 2. Acquiring new customers 3. Nurturing leads 4. Securing sales Your notes What are the marketing goals to help achieve this objective? Next, what are the marketing goals to help achieve this objective? Some examples can include: 1. Building more interactions with B2C customers 2. Introducing your products to new customers or existing customers to new products. 3. Get product feedback 4. Get new leads 5. Generate more repeat business 6. Drive a specific number of people to your web site 7. Lower the cost of customer acquisition 8. Create word of mouth buzz to lower marketing costs 9. Increase this year s revenues over last Your notes

5 Think about which segment of your target market you will approach and which messages you want to communicate to them. We recommend focusing on one to two goals for each campaign.

5 5 Think about which segment of your target market you will approach and which messages you want to communicate to them. We recommend focusing on one to two goals for each campaign. Anything more than that can dilute your call to action. This is especially true when you are communicating to prospects, since you don t have an existing relationship yet. Prioritizing goals will focus your efforts to a manageable set of achievable results. If you are working with an extended team, avoid agreeing to goals you know are unrealistic. 2. DEFINE THE AUDIENCE AND CRAFT PERSONAS How well do you know your audience? A good starting point is to conduct research by analyzing your current list The best B2C marketing programs define the right audiences, create a persona and then craft plans to target them with great content. A good starting point is to conduct research by analyzing your current list, site traffic and the data from any other lead generation channels. Don t overlook digging into your data, it will help you build more compelling marketing campaigns. Using a customer-focused approach will help to identify which content categories and topics will be most relevant and useful to your audiences. B2C audiences tend to be much larger than B2B audiences and the relationships can be in the thousands or even millions of subscribers. B2C audiences are typically divided by: 1. Demographic 2. Psychographic 3. Behavior Don t forget to think about the personas in your audience. Even though audience members may have signed up to receive information about your products and services, they are most likely in different stages of the buying process or possess different demographic and psychographic profiles. Spend some time reflecting on these elements for each segment: Demographic Demographics examine population segments. You will want to assess: 1. Where are they from? Is it urban, rural, suburban? 2. What are the specific age categories? 3. What gender are they? Is gender important to this product? 4. What annual salary do they earn? What is their household income? 5. What are their education levels?

6 Psychographic Psychographics consider how your customers think, what s important to them, and how they apply these attributes to their day-to-day life. Research these attributes: 1.

Behavior Behavior focuses on how your customer behaves in the buying cycle Behavior can be easier to research than other audience data.

6 6 Psychographic Psychographics consider how your customers think, what s important to them, and how they apply these attributes to their day-to-day life. Research these attributes: 1. What are their favorite brands and products? 2. What are their goals? What do they need to achieve their goals? 3. What are their favorite activities? 4. What are their cultural ideals? Behavior Behavior focuses on how your customer behaves in the buying cycle Behavior can be easier to research than other audience data. Behavior focuses on how your customer behaves in the buying cycle. Consider: 1. Did they buy from you recently? If so, what did they purchase? 2. What areas of your site do they visit most? 3. Do they buy from their desktop or are they more likely to use a mobile device? Your notes Example persona Recent college graduate. Just received a new job and is moving far from her college town. Needs to furnish her apartment in an urban environment. Has limited disposable income and prefers to purchase online and have items shipped to her new apartment. Stephanie Fuller 23 Stephanie has the need to research furniture specifications, measurements and see visuals to make a purchasing decision. She will need content that is highly relevant to herspecific situation and makes the buying process simple and secure.

7 3. IDENTIFY CUSTOMER NEEDS AND PAIN POINTS Targeting customer segments can improve the relevance and results of your email marketing efforts The next step in your email marketing plan is to

Targeting customer segments can improve the relevance and results of your email marketing efforts. Try this quick exercise: 1. Identify customer needs and pain points 2.

7 7 3. IDENTIFY CUSTOMER NEEDS AND PAIN POINTS Targeting customer segments can improve the relevance and results of your marketing efforts The next step in your marketing plan is to identify your customer s needs and pain points and then give them the relevant information they need. You can start with your target customer segments. Targeting customer segments can improve the relevance and results of your marketing efforts. Try this quick exercise: 1. Identify customer needs and pain points 2. Align those to your business, products and services 3. Group the needs or pain points by persona or audience Once you have mapped this out, you can use that information to target your marketing. It s important to use your customers point of view in this exercise rather than your terms. You can cull the pain points by asking lots of open-ended questions. Here is a quick list of questions you may want ask in this process: Why? (Then ask why 5 more times) What was your biggest challenge? What frustration do you have? What questions do you have? What are the hesitations? What is your decision making process? What is your purchasing process? How do I? Focus your efforts on customers needs and pains and then apply your expert knowledge to create relevant and valuable content to address these needs. 4. DESIGN ENGAGING CONTENT Content is the fuel that will drive click throughs and conversions from your messages. With customers inundated with information traffic, and filters becoming more sophisticated, content marketing helps you break through that and create more relevant marketing campaigns. B2C marketers have rated many tactics higher in effectiveness this year; in-person events and e-newsletters top the list. Marrying content marketing with will radically elevate your campaigns by creating a relevant exchange of value delivered via the trusted channel of . Your content should specifically align to the personas you created and help drive them to achieve your campaign goal. We ve aligned personas by generic buying stages, but plug in your own. Use content to move people through your sales funnel. Map relevant topics against each stage of the buying process for each persona.

8 8 Persona development worksheet Your notes Persona 1 Persona 2 Persona 3 Persona 4 Buying Stages Suspects Recent college graduate on the move. Just received a new job and is moving far from her college town. Needs to furnish her apartment in an urban environment. Limited disposable income and prefers to purchase online and have items shipped to her new apartment. Needs to research furniture specifications, measurements and see visuals. Prospects Looking for specific design elements and color pallettes. Leads Needs ability to view layout and accessory options. Opportunities Building a wish list in the shopping cart and investigating shipping options. Another tactic marketers use includes aligning Personas by the event that will trigger interest Another tactic marketers use includes aligning Personas by the event that will trigger interest. Similar to setting up trigger-based marketing. Identify the triggers or events, and replace them in the buying stages column above. In order to fully leverage content marketing to elevate your campaigns, create your content pipeline by understanding these buying and decision making phases a customer goes through. Map the content to what questions they ask and what they need to know at each stage.

9 Some important things to remember in B2C email marketing: B2C campaigns should be designed to inspire a customer to be quick to click B2C campaigns are much shorter in duration and need to capture

emotion, status, quality and comfort Suspects: I have a problem to solve. Suspects need educational information and to see you demonstrate thought leadership.

9 9 Some important things to remember in B2C marketing: B2C campaigns should be designed to inspire a customer to be quick to click B2C campaigns are much shorter in duration and need to capture the customer s interests very quickly B2C purchasing cycles should be short and simple with as few clicks as possible B2C campaigns needs crystal clear CTAs B2C buyers make a decisions based more on emotion, status, quality and comfort Suspects: I have a problem to solve. Suspects need educational information and to see you demonstrate thought leadership. They are doing basic information searches, most likely online to kick start the process of solving the problem. At this stage they may need assistance framing problem rather than solely solving the problem. They will search for available options to start making their decision. Prospects: How do I fix this problem? At the prospect phase, customers are searching options and narrowing their focus based on their requirements. They may need compare and contrast content to develop their short list of alternatives. Content designed to identify solutions by outlining features and benefits is the perfect fit for this stage of the buying process. Provide content that includes solution comparisons and vendor selection processes. Leads: Is this the solution to my problem? Leads have a deep understanding of the problem they need to solve and have already researched multiple products and solutions Leads have a deep understanding of the problem they need to solve and have already researched multiple products and solutions. They have vetted multiple options and narrowed their decision making process to a short list of solution providers. They are finalizing the their decision and need content that outlines how you can solve their problem. Opportunities: Show me how you will fix the problem. In the final stage of the buying process, opportunities are evaluating your credentials and resources to specifically fix the problem. You will need to share content that includes pricing, demonstrations, case studies and how to buy process steps. They will most likely also request content related to how you support your product or service post purchase.

10 10 The inbox is the perfect way to deliver the reach necessary to make your content marketing efforts worthwhile. Keep this process in mind when you are building strategies and techniques for marketing. By using content marketing integrated with your marketing strategy you can break through the noise and win the attention of your audiences. 5. DELIVERABILITY should be a part of any inbound marketing program should be a part of any inbound marketing program. For B2C marketers building, maintaining and optimizing lists can be difficult due to the volume of subscribers. It s important to make a continuous effort to scrub your lists and keep them up to date. IBM discovered that 17% of all s never make it to the inbox due to a lack of deliverability. Your sender reputation is critical to your delivery success rate. If you are not sure what your sender reputation is: 1. Analyze your open and conversion rates 2. Check your bounce rates 3. See if your s are landing in the spam folder of your subscribers In % of all traffic will be spam. The Radicati Group If these numbers are good, you probably have a good sender reputation. If you are seeing a decrease in open and conversion rates, and an increase in poor delivery, then you may want to consider securing a dedicated IP address. When to Get A Dedicated IP Dedicated IPs give you complete control of your sending reputation. If your marketing program sends volumes greater than 200,000 s per month to varied ISP s, a dedicated IP address might be for you. Securing a dedicated IP is an important decision and usually connected to the volume of messaging your marketing programs require. Large volume marketing programs require managers to spread the volume out over multiple IP addresses to keep information flowing smoothly.

11 Shared IP Groups Since some factors in determining your reputation are email volume and frequency, if you send low volumes infrequently you probably are well served by a shared IP group.

Sharing IPs gives you the opportunity to pair up with other email marketing programs and establish enough volume and frequency to have good results. That is, if everyone is deploying best practices.

11 11 Shared IP Groups Since some factors in determining your reputation are volume and frequency, if you send low volumes infrequently you probably are well served by a shared IP group. Without a dedicated IP address, your s are in a shared IP group which requires cooperation from all the senders within that group to keep a good reputation with the ISPs. Sharing IPs gives you the opportunity to pair up with other marketing programs and establish enough volume and frequency to have good results. That is, if everyone is deploying best practices. Benefits of securing a dedicated IP include: 1. Ensuring your delivery reputation is optimized 2. Smooth delivery of your s to all the major ISPs 3. Securing accreditation from services like ReturnPath 4. Proper monitoring of your delivery reputation 5. Positive sentiment gained with high open, click and conversion rates 6. Reduced placement of your s in the spam folders 7. Increased engagement due to a healthy reputation, leading to increased revenue IMPORTANT: using dedicated IP requires constant flow of s on daily basis, dedicated IP will not help if you are planning to send 1 blast per month as ISP s are monitoring consistency in the traffic and any spikes in the traffic might trigger a spam block. 6. MEASURE AND IMPROVE With marketing you can see exactly what was opened, clicked and more Remember the goals you defined early in the planning process? It s time to decide how you want to measure them. With marketing you can see exactly what was opened, clicked and more. Even if you ve done everything right, you can always continue to improve your marketing program and reach your goals. In measuring your marketing program, you should measure process metrics to determine the activity on messages. There are also measures for outcomes, including revenue, leads, downloads and more.

12 12 There are some marketing metrics you must track and measure: 1. Click Through Rate (CTR) Conversion rates can be the best way to measure the effectiveness of an campaign CTR measures the activity on messages. While it is not as important as conversions, CTR provides insight on the rate of engagement and how readers are responding to your call to action. 2. Conversion Rate Conversion rates can be the best way to measure the effectiveness of an campaign. The conversion rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link and competed a call to action. The higher the conversion rate, the more compelling the offer proved for your recipients. 3. Bounce Rate If your is rejected, it bounced. Bounces are important to track; they indicate the integrity of your address data. A hard bounce means the can not be delivered and the address is permanently removed from your subscriber list. A soft bounce is a temporary problem with the address usually because the recipients mailbox is full or the server is down. 4. List Growth and List Churn Delivery rate should be 95% OR HIGHER and is an indication of list health. List churn metrics reveal your subscribers level of engagement and loyalty to the content you share and your brand. If you see a rise in unsubscribe rates, you have an indication that the content you are serving isn t working anymore. 5. Delivery Rate Delivery rate is the percentage of s actually delivered to recipients inbox. The delivery rate should be 95% or higher and is an indication of list health. It is an important metric to monitor, so you can ensure you are not flagged as spam. 6. Open Reach Open reach is a customer engagement metric. It is a ratio of the subscribers who have opened at least one message over a period of time. Open reach is calculated by counting the number of subscribers on your specific list that have opened at least once and then dividing that by the number of subscribers that have received at least one from you over a given time period. You define the specific time frame, but most often it is quarterly, monthly or weekly depending on your send frequency. Open reach is important to see what your customer behaviors are over time. Improving open reach can impact your engagement and drive revenue growth.

13 13 Once you establish the marketing metrics you are going to track, start testing using different subject lines, copy, offers, and creative designs. You can use the real-time results to see which get the best response rates. Some marketers overlook A/B testing, but testing two sub-segments of your list will give you much deeper insight to see which is more successful. marketing is meant to be continuously refined for improved results, so make adjustments as you receive data. CONCLUSION Like any marketing effort, the real key to your success is careful planning and project management. This big book of B2C marketing tips should leave you with a great starting point. Use this book to accelerate every part of your B2C marketing effort, but remember our Customer Success Managers are always ready to answer your questions. ABOUT US Mailigen is Europe s leading marketing automation software and services company. The SaaS offers , mobile, social media marketing, and other managed services to customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. Mailigen brings international knowledge to local markets. Mailigen is known for its integration with e-commerce platforms such as Magento and Shopify, and innovative marketing features such as Responsive Online Surveys, Inbox Preview and Subject Line Advisor. To find out more, please visit mailigen.com. Share your feedback with us - use hashtag #RiseAndTell Are you just learning or maybe looking for ways to improve your marketing skills? We have created this document with best industry practices and helpful tips to be sure your are on the top of marketing performance. Download our Guides, Whitepapers, Datasheets, Smart-Tools and much more to take full control of your marketing campaigns. Published by Mailigen No part of the contents of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Mailigen Ltd.

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